


away from home

by catbrains



Series: knitted jumper [2]
Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Angst and Fluff, Complicated Relationships, M/M, Reconciliation, Snow Storm, Snowed In, brief mention of mental health issues and past home issues, i ended up making this a sequel to 'home-away-from-homemade', so now it's a series and i cannot be stopped, somewhat ambiguous but ultimately happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-09
Updated: 2019-01-09
Packaged: 2019-10-07 11:01:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17364710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catbrains/pseuds/catbrains
Summary: Shizuo welcomes an unexpected guest when a snow storm buries Ikebukuro.(Written for the 25 Days of Durarara!! event on the Durarara!! Amino.)





	away from home

**Author's Note:**

> (not beta read, please let me know if there are any mistakes!)
> 
> what do i love more - anxiously-in-love raijin shizaya, or angsty out-of-love post-raijin shizaya?  
> the answer is that i love both the same and now i've created a series specifically for the development of that relationship

Shizuo wakes up in the painfully early hours of the morning - so early that it’s basically still night as far as he’s concerned - to the sound of his apartment buzzer blaring.  The blinds in his bedroom are drawn, but he knows without looking that it’s pitch black outside, and the sound of harsh wind howls against the window.   
Half asleep and irritated, he wonders what kind of idiot would decide to sacrifice their life by annoying him at such a time.  Perhaps the cold weather was beginning to sap people’s sanity, as he could also say that the people he and Tom dealt with were also being exceptionally infuriating recently.   
  
It was this whole goddamn Christmas thing, blanketing the world in hollow expectations of cheer and goodwill and other such bullshit.  Shizuo has no interest in mercying those good-for-nothing bastards no matter what season it is, and their forlorn cries of “but it’s Christmas!” while he sends them sailing over the city only solidifies his irritation.   
Perhaps he’d be less bitter if the season didn’t make him feel so lonely, but that’s neither here nor there.  For now, he’ll probably end up working off some of the irritation by screaming at the dumbass who’s still laying into his buzzer like they think he’s deaf or something.   
  
He can’t quite bite back a growl as he throws back the thick covers of his bed, wincing as the cold air of his apartment eagerly embraces him.  The temperature had dropped harshly from what it had been when he went to bed, making him shiver as he stalks towards his locked front door.   
He swings it open, not entirely sure what to expect, but the sight in front of him catches him entirely off-guard.   
  
“Hello, Shizu-chan.”   
  
Izaya is stood on his welcome mat out in the hallway, soaking wet, deathly pale, and shivering like a leaf.  He’s wearing one of his larger, thicker coats, and has the fluffy hood pulled up over his head, but the material looks as if it’s soaked through and is surely doing very little to retain any body heat.  His shoes - a black pair of those stupidly expensive designer work boots - are soaked too, like he’s been wading through a lake.   
  
“The fuck happened to you?”   
Perhaps it’s not the best question to ask when Izaya of all people is stood at his door looking like a half-drowned kitten, but it’s the first one to come to mind.  Izaya scowls at him as if the whole situation is his fault.   
“A sudden snowstorm rolled in a couple of hours ago,” he explains impatiently, and it’s only then that Shizuo notices how Izaya’s voice is breathy and trembling.  He must be freezing. “The whole city is buried and the trains aren’t running. I did try and walk home, but the police stopped me. They said I’d die trying, so here I am.  Trapped in Ikebukuro, searching mournfully for someone to take pity on a poor soul like me.”   
  
Several seconds of silence pass, during which Shizuo continues to stare at Izaya, completely ignoring the intentionally ostentatious attitude that would usually piss him right off.  Right now, he’s too distracted by the fact that Izaya’s pale lips are blue-tinted, and there isn’t a single other hint of colour to his face - only a glittering spattering of ice clinging to his long black lashes.  His hair is damp and hanging in his face, and his hands are buried in his pockets but Shizuo has no doubt that they’re blue and aching.   
  
Izaya’s hands are so small and delicate, despite the countless scars littering the flesh from those days long ago when he wasn’t quite so skilled with his knives.  Shizuo remembers all those days in high school when the temperatures would drop even a little - Izaya would always be whining. The cold always seemed to hurt him, sinking into his bones, and Shizuo almost felt guilty that he himself barely felt the cold at all.   
More often than not, when they were hidden away alone somewhere, he’d end up with Izaya in his arms, small and shivering as he tried to absorb as much heat as possible into his stupidly skinny frame.  Or, when they were sat on the roof together, Shizuo would hold Izaya’s dainty hands between his own large, calloused ones, waiting patiently until the aching in Izaya’s bones seemed to lessen.   
  
The scene now feels deeply nostalgic.  Many times in the winter, Izaya would show up at Shizuo’s house at ridiculous hours and text him to let him in so that he didn’t wake Shizuo’s parents with the doorbell.  When they were settled in the warm together, usually in the kitchen - only in Shizuo’s bedroom on the particularly bad nights - Izaya would talk quietly about his parents kicking him out again, or about his head being so loud and terrifying that being lay in his bed at home felt like torture.   
Shizuo would always listen.  And he’d always make hot chocolate, and Izaya would always drink it even if the sweet taste made him feel nauseous.   
  
The silence has been hanging for far too long.   
Somewhat dazed, too lost in memories and feeling from a long time ago, Shizuo silently shakes his head as if trying to clear it and steps back from the door.  Still shivering, Izaya steps inside.   
  
He strips methodically, first removing his water-heavy coat and hanging it somewhat gingerly on the hook beside the door.  Next his boots are kicked off, revealing the just-as-soaked socks beneath, and he’s left looking very small and very miserable in his damp black t-shirt and jeans.  He spends a few moments digging through his coat, and eventually emerges with several phones and two switchblades in his hands.   
It certainly wouldn’t do to leave those to get soaked to the bones like him.   
  
“Uh...you can go take a shower,” Shizuo offers, somewhat awkwardly.  What’s the usual expectation for a situation like this? What is he meant to say?   
“It just takes a while for the water to warm up.  I’ll dig out some clothes for you.”   
Thankfully, Izaya only nods silently and sets his knives and phones down on Shizuo’s damaged old coffee table, before he makes his way towards the bathroom without requiring direction.   
  
Shizuo watches him go, feeling a strange emotion that he can’t quite identify curling in his chest.     
It’s strange, treating Izaya like this again.   
When they’d reached the end of high school and everything had fallen apart, he was sure that he’d never get the chance again to treat Izaya as anything more than an enemy.  He can’t pretend it’s unpleasant, though, to have Izaya here again - close, but not to hurt.    
Just...to have, maybe.  At least until the snow melts.   
  
With a soft sigh, Shizuo walks to the kitchen and turns on his kettle, before turning back and walking into his bedroom.  It’s a mess, as usual, and he spends a rather rushed few minutes throwing a few pairs of dirty underwear into the laundry basket and putting some of the few knickknacks into order.  He’s used to living in some form of mess, since he certainly isn’t used to company, but he’s sure that Izaya’s own apartment is probably pristine and it’s enough to make him somewhat insecure.   
He wants Izaya to like it here.  He wants Izaya to be comfortable.   
  
Once he feels that things are as put-together as they’re getting, he walks to his chest of drawers and begins searching.  He’s searching for something very specific, and before long he finds it - that old knitted jumper that Izaya had stolen from him when they were in high school.   
One day, after he’d stopped seeing Izaya and after Izaya had slashed that cut across his chest - right over his heart - he’d walked into his bedroom back at his parents’ house one day to see that jumper lay on his bed, folded neatly.  Izaya had returned it, freshly washed and smelling like a laundromat because Izaya didn’t live the sort of life where he could just put stuff in the laundry at home for his mother to wash for him.   
Shizuo had sat down and pulled the jumper into his lap and breathed in its foreign but familiar scent, and then he had cried and yelled at nobody and punched a large hole into his bedroom wall.   
  
He’d never worn the jumper again, but he’d always kept it.   
The biggest step he’d ever taken towards leaving Izaya behind him had been allowing his mother to wash it before he moved out, taking away that last bit of Izaya’s scent and replacing it with his own.   
  
This time, he really hopes Izaya keeps the jumper.   
He digs out an old pair of grey joggers too, hoping that the draw string will be enough to keep them up on Izaya’s bony little hips, and carries the small pile of clothes with him to the closed bathroom door.   
  
The shower isn’t running anymore, but the smell of Shizuo’s shower gel hangs in the air and a hint of steam flows steadily from underneath the door.   
“Clothes are here,” he announces, before he sets them down on the floor and disappears again.   
  
He walks towards the kitchen, to the kettle that must’ve boiled a few minutes ago, and decides that he may as well finish the usual routine from all those years ago.   
He pulls down two mugs and the hot chocolate mix, and by the time he’s stirring the second mug he hears the pit-pat of soft footsteps approach him on the cheap laminate flooring of the kitchen.   
  
“Hey,” Izaya says softly.     
“Hey,” Shizuo responds.  “The shower nice?”   
A quiet hum of affirmation, then more soft footsteps as Izaya slowly walks closer, until he’s barely a foot away from Shizuo.   
It’s the closest they’ve been in a long time - at least, without the press of a knife or grip of a throat hanging in the space between them, and that fact seems as if it should make Shizuo feel anxious now, but instead he just feels at peace.   
The world outside, freezing cold and merciless as it may be, seems to fade into meaningless oblivion.  All of the violence, all of the hurt, all of the expectations, they all disappear just like they used to when they spent time like this in high school.   
  
Finally, after several silent minutes spent just standing and existing and breathing, two more soft footsteps approach Shizuo and then a bony chin rests against his shoulder.  Arms wrap around his torso, and he can’t help but feel a throb in his chest when he sees the brown detailing on the cuffs of that jumper - still massive on Izaya’s frame.   
  
“I missed you.”   
  
Izaya’s voice sounds so gentle now.  Nothing like how it sounds outside. Not even quite like how it used to sound.  There’s another layer of pain to it now.   
Shizuo lets out a somewhat shaky breath and relaxes slowly back in Izaya’s arms.   
  
“I missed you too.”   
  
Maybe it is an illusion.  Maybe these feelings will melt away along with the snow, maybe they’ll come back next week or next year like the unpredictable but unstoppable whims of nature, maybe it all will never melt and they’ll stay here like this forever, feeling something like peace and something like pain.   
  
For now, it doesn’t matter.  For now, it’s okay just to exist.


End file.
